“I might as well. I can’t check it open that way, and I can’t close it at my present weight. I need everything I’ve squeezed into it; and so what else can I do?”
“If we could only get someone to help us,” said Marita, innocently, seeming to take Bess literally. “One of the boys——”
She was interrupted by the laughter of the others, for Marita was a newcomer in Chelton, and though Cora and her chums had taken her up, attracted by her nice ways, Marita did not yet appreciate her new friends.
“Don’t mind what Bess says, my dear,” spoke Cora, as she saw that Marita was a little hurt at the laughter. “As for the boys, please don’t suggest such a thing. If they came in now, we’d never get through packing. I hope——”
“All hope abandon, ye who enter here!” declaimed a voice in the doorway, and the faces of two young men peered in.
“Too late!” exclaimed Cora, as she saw her brother Jack and his chum, Walter Pennington. “The boys are here! Any more of you, Jack?” she asked, as she crowded some feminine finery out of sight behind her back.
“No. Why?”
“Because I’m going to give general orders for you to depart at once, and I want to include everyone. Begone!”
“Heartless one!” murmured Walter, sliding into the room under Jack’s arm. “Just when we came to help you, too!”
“Here!” called Bess, from her position, Turkish fashion, amid a billowy pile of garments, “Help me up first, Wallie, my dear, and then sit on my trunk.”